Abstract

The Korean culture has been influenced heavily by the Confucian philosophy past 6 to 7 centuries, so it has strong characteristics of collectivism. Thus to understand the distinctive features of the motivation of Korean people, it is needed to review the cross-cultural studies on motivation and the Confucian theory of human motivation. From the review of the massive articles concerning cultural influences on motivations, it was found that cultural views of person in general and the self as independent, separate and autonomous being, predominant in the individualistic cultures, or as interdependent and relational being, predominant in the collectivist cultures, foster and encourage cross-culturally divergent needs and incentives. In individualistic cultures, self-directed motive, individually oriented achievement motive, motive to control environment, self-enhancement motive and consistency motive are relatively salient; but in collectivist cultures, other-directed motive, socially oriented achievement motive, motive to control internal desires, self-criticism motive and conformity motive are relatively dominant. On the while, the Confucian philosophers thought of human needs and motives largely as follows : (1) the motive for being a man of virtue is the topmost and central in the motive repertoire, (2) the biological and egoistic motives should be temperated to secure the harmony of social life, and (3) the control of lower motives (biological and egoistic motives) is the way to sublimate the motives, which is the goal of human life. On the basis of these two branches of reviews, a preliminary conceptual framework to understand the characteristic features of the motivations of Korean people was proposed and discussed.